The title “Son of Man” comes.
Today we read together the most difficult passage in the New Testament. It is a story about the end times. It is difficult to live today while reflecting on the past, and to think about what will happen in the distant future is a bit painful and sometimes not very real. How fierce are the things that lie before us today? Students must take exams, housewives must take care of their families' food and health, teachers must study to teach well, and workers must work frantically. Even these things would make modern people's heads explode. That is why it is said that the best-selling medicine is a headache medicine. No matter how much you look at the body text today, it seems that it has nothing to do with our lives. Most Christians will not pay much attention to this text.
Conversely, there are some people who are fanatical about this kind of thing. The members of the “Dami Mission” that took place in 1992 are such people. They completely put aside their current life and focused on the second coming of Jesus and their rapture, which would take place on October 30, 1992 (?). We cannot agree with a cynical view of eschatology, the teaching of the end of the world, as unrealistic, nor with a fanatical clinging to it. Which attitude is the most desirable religious attitude? In order to find the right answer to this question, it is imperative to first understand the Bible text accurately. The text we have chosen today is divided into three paragraphs.
son of man
Verses 25-28 describe the coming of the “Son of Man”. We should read this verse in relation to chapter 21 as a whole. Jesus is now spending the last moment of his public life. It was a time when all the religious and political leaders of Israel, including the Pharisees, Sadducees, Herodians, and priests, were actually and implicitly taking steps to deal with Jesus. When Jesus saw people giving offerings in front of the treasury in the temple in Jerusalem, he said that a poor widow's penny was a much more valuable offering than a rich man's large amount of money. (Luke 21:1-4) Then Jesus said that the Jerusalem temple would be destroyed. You have foretold it (verses 3 and 6). The disciples must have been surprised when they heard this. The destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, which is all about Israel's faith, meant the destruction of the nation of Israel. It was also the end of the world for them. The disciples asked “when” this would happen. A series of answers to these questions is today's text.
Jesus spoke figuratively about the last days without mentioning the exact date and time. According to verse 25, the universe will be shaken at that time. According to verse 26, all nations and peoples will tremble with anxiety. There is no choice but to do so. Can we not be afraid of strange phenomena appearing on the Earth and the entire universe, including the sun, moon, and stars? According to verse 27, at that time the “Son of Man” descends on the clouds with power and in glory. In verse 28, Jesus said that the very time the world fears is the time when salvation draws near. Taken as a whole, this verse contrasts two phenomena. One side is people's anxiety through the cosmic upheaval, and the other side is salvation realized by the coming of the “Son of Man”.
Verses 29-33, “the parable of the fig tree,” are supplementary remarks to the above statement. Just as you can tell the seasons by looking at the leaves of a fig tree, such a sign will also appear when the kingdom of God approaches. Verse 32 is difficult for us to understand. “I say clearly. All of this must happen before this generation is gone.” If we take these words literally, the end must have happened while the disciples of Jesus were still alive. But in reality, none of those things happened. Are these words of Jesus wrong? Did Jesus' predictions go wrong? Or did the disciples misunderstand these words? This is a very difficult problem, so it is better to put it aside and follow the rest of the text we have read.
Verses 34-36 could be sub-titled, “Watch and pray.” The end will come suddenly, so please don't get distracted by useless worries about the world. The end comes as abruptly as the “trap” we use to catch wild animals. So, do not look away for even a moment and pray “always awake”.
As seen above, the text refers to three things as a whole. First, the “Son of Man” comes at the end of the cosmological transformation. Second, the time of the end is preceded by a sign. Third, the moment happens suddenly, unpredictably. What the hell is this text trying to say? Words from 2,000 years ago have not yet happened, and there are no signs that it will happen anytime soon. So, do these words mean nothing to us today?
end and return
From verses 25-28 we can see that the cosmological end is the event of the coming of the “Son of Man”. At that time, the entire universe, including the sun, moon, and stars, will be dismantled and reconstituted. Scenes like this are terrifying for many. It's a natural story. Imagine a whole universe that changes when a family is broken up by a parent's divorce and the children are shocked. What kind of impact would that have? Can I be a little more specific? Imagine that we can float in the air. Imagine trees and birds talking to us directly. Imagine a lake floating in the air.
Some of you may be thinking, “Stop playing with puns like cartoons.” It's never a joke. Such things often happen in our daily life. look at the seeds When you plant a seed in the ground, after a while it takes on a completely different look. Buds appear and flowers bloom. The transformation of a seed into a flower is no different from that the sun, moon, and stars, the cosmos in front of us today, can appear in completely different forms. What would the future look like if a seed became obsessed with the shape it was familiar with and feared that it would change into a flower?
Today's text says that the time of such cosmological transformation will be the second coming of the Son of Man, that is, Jesus, and then we will be saved. This is the event where Jesus came on the clouds, with power, and wrapped in glory. It is a power and an honor to win a lottery worth 1 billion won at most, or to change the very form of our lives, not ministers or lawmakers. But the “son of man” mentioned in verse 27 is based on a vision Daniel saw. “I saw another strange sight in the night, and a man in human form came with clouds from heaven, and was led before the Ancient of days” (Daniel 7:13). We believed that “the one who did this” is Jesus Christ, and today we are also waiting for this Jesus to come when the universe will change and be completed.
question about the end times
When is that time? Verses 29-33 refer to the fact that we can discern the time, and further mention that this will happen before the end of the generation. I asked earlier whether Jesus' prediction of the end times was wrong. The Gospel of Luke does not explicitly mention this, but the Gospels of Mark and Matthew are different. “But no one knows the day and the hour. The angels in heaven do not know, nor the Son, but only the Father.” (Mark 13:32) Not knowing the Son means that Jesus does not know either. Because God created the world and perfected it, only God knows the time. Some of you may not be satisfied with this answer. Physicists, in particular, who think about the total time of the universe, would be much more dissatisfied.
Stephen Hawking said this a while ago. It means that in the future, humans will have to migrate to find a planet other than Earth. The remaining time on Earth is only 4.5 billion years, even if calculated according to the original timetable. However, it is very likely that it will be destroyed before then. Even if not destroyed, there is a high chance that it could turn into a planet that could no longer sustain life. A sudden ice age, collision with a comet, or a nuclear war would end the life system on Earth. Hawking is not the first to claim that we need to find another planet. Carl Sagan already wrote a book about this a long time ago. Future human beings will immigrate to distant planets and look at the blue planet Earth, reminiscing about the stars in which their ancestors lived in the past. According to Carl Sagan and Hawking's logic, the end of mankind may not come.
In a way, our Christian faith competes with physics and biology. This competition does not necessarily mean confrontational. Regarding history and the end, life and the universe, our Christian faith believes in the intervention of God, the Creator, but scientists are only faithful to the principles of nature. There is absolutely no need to think that the natural sciences are the only criterion by which everything is completely determined, because the world has not always been as predicted by scientists. Just as Newton did not know today's quantum mechanics, it must be seen that today's scientists also do not know about the ultimate world that has not yet been revealed. There is nothing to ignore or deny their efforts. We only need to correctly interpret the salvation and the end that the Bible and the 2,000-year-old faith explain. Some of them agree with the explanations of natural scientists, and some are wrong. All we need to do is to properly understand the whole world, including us humans, and present the right direction through competition in good faith.
Words are flowing a little sideways. It came about because he explained the end and the Second Coming, which are very difficult and subtle problems for us. What the Bible says is very clear. The end of the universe, when it will be reconstituted, is coming to us, but no one knows the exact time. So, how should Christians live in this age before the end of time? Should we not think about the end at all and live only in reality? Or do I have to ignore reality and live my life obsessed with the end of life? This was the problem I presented in the first place.
Today's text advises us: Two things. One is verse 34. “Be careful that you do not become preoccupied with eating and drinking with a lot of fun and worrying about the world.” Why? Because you never know when that day will come suddenly. The other is 36b. “Keep awake and pray always.” How foolish it would be to worry that a seed would lose its shape. We need to focus our minds on the fact that we are transforming into a life that is completely different from what we worry about. This attitude of life is to be awake and to pray. Those who are spiritually awake are those who pray, and those who pray are awake. Like the bride waiting for the bridegroom, or the groom waiting for the bride, we need to be vigilant and discern this age. Amen.